1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the handling and disposition of articles, and more particularly to an apparatus capable of reverse operation for loading articles into rows of a container or unloading previously loaded articles from rows of a container. The present invention is particularly useful in newspaper production situations where stacks of newspapers, generally referred to as pre-prints, are produced prior to final assembly into the newspaper.
2. Introduction and Brief Description of Prior Art
In newspaper production operations, it is typical to print pre-prints in advance of the time at which the newspaper is produced. For example, inserts are typically included in many Sunday newspapers. These inserts or pre-prints are generally printed days in advance of the time the Sunday newspaper is printed. The pre-prints are accurately counted into predetermined sizes of stacks and thereafter hand loaded on skids or special pallets and moved to a storage area by a manually operated load carrying vehicle. The pre-prints remain in storage until such time as the final newspaper assembly is started. The pre-printed sections are then manually transported from the storage area and either unloaded by hand onto a conveyor where the sections are hand stuffed into the final newspapers, or are unloaded by hand into a machine which automatically combines the pre-prints and the sections of the final newspaper. Such an arrangement has the disadvantages that an extra number of assistants must be employed to handle the pre-prints and that the use of storage space and manual production techniques increase the cost of the newspaper.
A variety of different conveying systems and arrangements are known in the art. Some of these systems and arrangements are represented by U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,703,182; 2,703,653; 3,045,801; 3,094,225; and 3,096,891. Some of the conveying systems represented by the cited patents relate to arranging articles in a suitable manner to be palletized. The articles are arranged in a configuration defining one horizontal layer, and a number of horizontal layers are vertically stacked on top of one another to form a desired configuration on the pallet. Frequently, the article configuration within each horizontal layer is varied to provide stability to the articles on the pallet. Other concepts such as conveying and operating on a single article at a time are illustrated by the cited prior art.
Other techniques, concepts and limitations in the prior art are known. Those skilled in the art will recognize various desirable aspects of the present invention, but comprehension of the desirable aspects of this invention should not diminish the significance of limitations in the prior art.